I’m an American software developer living in Berlin, Germany. During the day, I work as Technology Advisor at Microsoft for Startups. After hours, I’m a photographer and author. All opinions here are mine.

Marques Brownlee is one of my favorite YouTubers. I’ve enjoyed watching him grow from a 15 year old kid making videos in his parent’s house to the accomplished and thoughtful man he is today. He enriches my experience of life by sharing his experience with us.

My feeling is that we can start by checking in with each other, ask all colleagues how they’re doing and what they need, have empathy for what others are feeling. We talk about Model, Coach, Care for our managers, but it’s actually a good framework for how we can, each of us, be there for each other, and for our communities. We can model that behavior we need to see, coach others on how they can be better allies, and care for each other in times of crisis.

This is an excerpt from Satya Nadella’s comments to Microsoft staff on May 28th, shared by Kathleen Hogan.

“So often Trump has engaged in dog whistles,” Lusane said. “But he also engages in blaring trumpets. And this is a pretty clear and very loud message that the response should not be let’s try to address the justice issues that are involved here but let’s be hard-line.”

When we look back, we will understand that the 21st century truly began this year, when the COVID19 pandemic took hold. We are entering the century of being blindsided by things that we have been warned about for decades but never took seriously enough to prepare for, the century of lurching from crisis to crisis until, at last, we shake ourselves from the illusion that our world will go back to the comfortable way it was and begin the process of rebuilding our society from the ground up.

We have difficult decisions to make and it’s time to start doing some strategic planning to help us along the way.

Being able to directly access cloud compute like this from a development desktop will be super cool and useful. More importantly, it will remove a point of friction between developing something locally and deploying it somewhere you can share it with others.

Decades of work undermined the ability of America to govern itself effectively and has resulted in this tragedy, an incalculable loss. Convinced that government was too incapble to govern, and attracted to the prospect of profitably taking it apart, a group of people have managed to make that reality come true through exploiting division and fear.

This is the reality we have created. One where the threat of a virus can’t be effectively responded to with the weight it deserves.

It didn’t have to be this way. No matter which party they affiliate with, we should endeavour to put into power people beleive that government is a service to the people, and not an impedement to profit at the public’s expense. We can argue about how big or how small government should be. We can keep having the discussion about states rights versus federal rights. We’ve all got opinions.